Len has found his mate, but there's an unexpected obstacle.
He's recessive.
Len thought that he would always love Ahote, and all he had to do was grow up and claim him.
Before he could come of age and confess his feelings to the man he loved, a Sibe...
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LEN
"You're Len's mate, right?"
"I'm what?"
I was approaching the booth I had left Adyen in my himself when I caught the conversation going on between him and June, one of the pack werewolves. I froze on the spot, making Leigh stop too. She gave my shoulder a squeeze, bending forward so that I could see the confused look on her face.
"Why do you look so shocked?" she asked, and I just blinked, realizing she had heard the conversation too. It wasn't too hard to pick words from a distance when you had wolf hearing. I'm sure Adyen had it to some extent too, so I lowered my voice, pulling Leigh aside until we were hidden in the crowd of werewolves speaking to each other with paper cups filled with punch juice in their hands. I had been gone for too long, it seemed. I don't remember rush hour being until another thirty minutes or so.
"Adyen doesn't know we're mates," I whispered into Leigh's ear. Her eyes went wide, but she kept her composure. She nodded, pulling away from me before navigating back to the table through the booth. I followed her, watching as she grasped onto June's shoulder before giving her a passive-aggressive smile.
"Hey, stop pestering him," Leigh said, and June looked up at her, mirroring the smile on Georgiou's wife's face before getting up and slipping away. Adyen watched her back, confusion was written on his face as the woman walked away.
"Sorry about that," Leigh muttered, slipping into the booth June had been occupying. I slid in with her, looking at Adyen who had now turned to meet Leigh's gaze. "I hope she wasn't saying anything weird. Everyone's pretty excited to see you, so they might be talking to you about things you don't know yet," Leigh muttered, folding her hands before leaning forward on the table.
The darkness was starting to make the orange and yellow artificial lights pop. I watched as the color bounced off Adyen's darker skin and Leigh's brown eyes.
"Len said you're recessive," Leigh said when no one offered to speak first.
"Y-yeah," Adyen got out. He wasn't looking at Leigh. He was staring at me. His eyes were narrowed, and his full lips were drawn thin as he seemed to probe me for information that I wasn't giving him. I looked away, wondering what else June had told him. I had told people that Adyen was recessive so that they wouldn't act up around him, but I had forgotten to mention that I was keeping the mating part a secret from him. Adyen didn't need to know that. At least not yet.
